Ethel had heard Rita refer to the original of this portrait once or twice as "Dicker" or "Curly."
But, then, there was another photograph. A large one this time, done in cloudy browns, nearly a foot square and with the name of a very famous artist of the camera stamped into the card.
This was a new arrival, also, of the past few weeks, and it was held in a massive frame of thick plain silver.
The frame, with the portrait in it, had arrived at the flat some fortnight ago in an elaborate wooden box.
Ethel had recognised the portrait at once. It was of Mr. Gilbert Lothian, the great poet. Rita had met him at a dinner-party, and, if she didn't exaggerate, the great man had almost shown a disposition to be friendly. It was nice of him to send Rita his photograph, but the frame was rather too much. All that massive silver!—"it must have cost thirty shillings at least," she had thought in her innocence.
When the gas was turned up, for some reason or other her eye had fallen at once upon the photograph upon the top of the piano.
She had read some of Lothian's poems, but she had found nothing whatever in them that had pleased her. Even when her father had written to her and recommended them for her to read the poems meant less than nothing, and the face—no! she didn't like the face. "I hardly think that it's quite a good face," she said to herself, not recognising that—the question of morality quite apart—her hostility rose from the fact that it was a face utterly outside her limited experience, a face that was eloquent of a life, of things, of thoughts that she could never even begin to understand.
In the middle of the room the small round table was spread with a fair white cloth and set for a meal. There was a green bowl of bananas, a loaf of brown bread, some sardines in a glass dish. But a place was laid for one person only.
Rita was in their mutual bedroom dressing. Rita was going to dine out.
The two girls had lived together for a year now. At the beginning of their association one thing had been agreed between them. Their outside lives were to be lived independently of their home life. No confidences were to be expected or demanded as a matter of course. If confidences were made they were to be free and spontaneous, at the wish or whim of each.